by Rick Hautala
“’N maybe I won’t even go home for lunch,” he said. “No one knows I’m out here … not unless I tell them. I probably wouldn’t even hear the cowbell, anyway. I—I just wish people could see how far it’s gone. How bad it is. I shouldn’t have gotten so scared last night, but I don’t want it to happen again, so I’ve gotta do this. I’ve gotta do this! Damn-damn-damn!”
Gritting his teeth, he started walking again. His finger hurt from the tight grip he maintained on the shovel handle.
“I can’t tell anyone, though. Of course not! Because you never know when it’ll happen. The Russians could attack without warning now that they’re so close, with their missile there in Cuba. I’ll bet they didn’t even take them all out either. They’re just trying to trick the president. Maybe should’ve told someone else so I would have had some help out here.”
Nervousness coiled like a dry snake in his stomach as he broke out of the woods and started up the dusty road that led to the mill. What used to be the loading yard was now overgrown with weeds and thin grass. A gentle breeze blew dust like hazy, yellow smoke up into the air. The sunlight hurt his eyes, and the heat of the day wrapped around him like a heavy blanket. For an instant, he thought he detected a shifting of motion inside one of the basement windows, but he knew from experience that it was better to ignore everyone and everything he saw out here. If someone wanted to talk to him, they would talk to him when they were ready. He knew he shouldn’t go looking for them, expecting them to show themselves. They didn’t want to be seen. It was unnerving, though, the way they would always talk to him and never let him see them. Sometimes it was kind of creepy, the way they’d just whisper to him—and to themselves—in the echoing darkness of the mill.
No, Mikie told himself, the only thing to do right now was simply to decide where to begin and get to work. He crossed the weed-choked loading yard and entered the soft, blue shadow cast by the building, grateful for the relief the shade gave him from the heat. Wandering out back, he started to whistle “Davy Crockett,” all the while scanning the sides of the deserted building, looking for a likely spot to enter. He shivered again, thinking that he could feel cold eyes staring at him through the broken windows on the top floor. The wind whistled around the corner of the building with a high, steady hiss that sounded like a snake, hissing … or almost like those whispering voices … almost
Mikie paused a moment to listen, to see if they had anything to say to him. He couldn’t stop wondering if the voice he had heard last night, suggesting that he build his bomb shelter out here today, was one of the same voices he heard at the mill from time to time. That voice last night hadn’t sounded like one of his friends from out here; but then again, even though he thought he knew everyone’s voice well enough to recognize them, one of them could have disguised his voice—or else it could have been someone else … someone he hadn’t met yet.
“But what if—what if it’s someone … bad,” Mike said, shivering wildly as he looked up at the building. The hair on his arms prickled as though electrified. His gaze fixed on the flattened ruins of the small building attached to the back of the mill. “Or what if the Russians are broadcasting radio messages only I can hear, trying to control me? What if this is a trap and they’re making me do this?”
Another wild shiver shook his shoulders, and his teeth chattered in spite of the day’s heat pressing down on him. Someone is watching me!
He dropped the shovel to the ground and fumbled to open the leather case at his side. His hands were slick with sweat, and he almost dropped the camera as he unfolded the lens and raised it to his eye. Squinting into the viewfinder, he swept it back and forth and then aimed it at the burned-out building. The world was curiously distorted through the lens.
“Squeeze … squeeze slowly, now,” he cautioned himself, aware that his hands were trembling.
The shutter clicked, and then the mechanism inside his camera started churning. Mike watched as the gray sheet of film slid slowly out the side of the camera. He tore off the print and started counting out loud to sixty while he collapsed the camera and put it back into its carrying case. His voice was trembling with repressed agitation as he waited for the picture to develop. When he was done counting, he peeled off the protective gray covering and looked at the snapshot.
His aim had been bad, and he had jiggled the camera just as he had clicked it. The picture was tilted to one side and blurred, but it had caught most of the charred timbers of the flattened building as well as a corner of the smoke-blackend side of the mill. The trees in the background were nothing more than an out-of-focus riot of shadow and light, but there was something in the foreground, something behind the burned timbers that caught Mike’s attention. He shielded the photo from the glare of the sun with his body and brought it up close to his face, trying to see whether or not that really was what he thought it was—someone’s face, peering at him from underneath the pile of burned rubble. It certainly looked like a face!
“Do you want me to make it in there?” he whispered with a tight trembling in his voice. “Is—is that what you’re trying to tell me … that I can build my fallout shelter in the cellar? Under the burned part?”
His eyes jerked from the photo to the reality. He wasn’t at all surprised that there was no longer even a hint of a face in the pile of rubble. Lots of things he saw and heard out here had a way of being there and then disappearing.
“So you—you don’t mind if I’m out here, then, huh? Do you?” he shouted, almost choking on his words as he looked up at the tall, smooth side of the building. His voice rebounded with a dull echo from inside the abandoned mill, and he tried not to think about the flutter of motion he thought he saw behind one of the broken windows in the cellar. Even the birds and the breeze seemed hushed as he cocked his head to one side as though waiting for a reply.
“It’s just that I … I have something I want to do,” he shouted. “Something I have to do. I thought maybe you were the ones who told me to do it.”
Still, there was no reply, so Mike picked up his shovel and, after making sure his camera was fastened securely to his belt, started walking around to the front of the mill. He was trembling inside as he approached the doorless front entryway. He paused a moment to look up at the towering, gray side of the building. A wave of nausea swept through him. Shuddering wildly, he forced himself to ignore the many pairs of eyes he sensed were watching him from the surrounding shadows as he walked up to the doorway and entered the old mill.
“What the hell is he up to?” Charlie whispered.
He and Ray were crouching outside the mill, peering into the basement through one of the windows out front. Eddie had his arms folded across his chest and was leaning back against the side of the building with one foot supporting him. The sun was beating down hard on his face, and he could feel a sheen of sweat beneath his T-shirt.
“You didn’t tell him we were coming out here, did you, Eddie?” Charlie whispered, casting a suspicious glance at his friend.
“Looks to me like he’s trying to set up house down there or something,” Ray said. Then, turning to Eddie, he asked pointedly, “Is that what the retard’s up to? Playing house? Or did your old lady finally give up on him and kick him out for good?”
Eddie scowled but said nothing.
“I just don’t like the way he’s moving crap around down there,” Ray said nervously. “I left the Playboy under that barrel. What if he picks it up?”
“What’s the big sweat?” Charlie said. “If he finds it, you can take it away from him and tell him never to mention it. Stop worrying about it. And anyway, he wouldn’t know what to do with it if he did find it.”
“And you would?” Eddie said, snickering.
“Up your ass, Buzz-saw!”
“I want to get my magazine,” Ray said, sounding almost desperate. “How the hell am I gonna get in there without him seeing me?”
“Who the hell cares if he sees you? What’s he gonna do to you, huh?”
“He almost blew it yesterday, and if he sees me with it again, he might say something to Farty or someone. I dunno. I just don’t like him being down there.”
“Cool your heels, will you?” Eddie said. “Let’s go swimming.”
All of the boys were keeping their voices low as they watched Mike, who was moving back and forth between the small room partitions at the far end of the basement. The remains of tumbled-down interior walls and broken doorways pretty much blocked their view of what he was doing. All they could tell was that he was busy doing … something. He kept appearing and disappearing as he carried granite blocks and pieces of broken timber out of sight into the farthest reaches of the basement. As he worked, he kept up a nearly steady stream of conversation with himself. His voice echoed dully from inside the basement. They all knew it was just nonsense, so nobody even tried to hear what he was saying. Mike might not be the “retard” Ray and the other kids said he was, but even Eddie had to admit—at least to himself—that his brother was odd. He couldn’t help but wonder why Mikie was working so energetically. What the hell was he up to?
“I just want to get my magazine and get the hell out of here,” Ray said. “I’ll take my chances hiding it in the chicken coop.”
“So go ahead and get it!” Charlie said.
“Yeah, what’s stopping you?” Eddie added, hoping to capitalize on Ray’s desire to get moving. “Let’s get the damned thing and get the hell going. It’s getting hotter every second, and I wouldn’t mind getting out to Nickerson’s sometime today.”
“Well, I still wanna know what he’s up to,” Charlie said, craning his neck forward and watching Mike’s activity with intense curiosity. “Maybe we could get a better view from the other side.”
Shouldering Charlie aside, Ray peered into the basement. “Naw. There’s too much shit in the way. ’Sides, all he’s got is a little dinky candle.” He snorted and spat. “Christ, the retard’s even too damned stupid to bring a half-decent flashlight.” He watched a moment longer, then sat back on his heels. “Looks to me like he’s doing something in the space underneath the burned-out part out back.” He was silent again for a moment; then, looking back and forth between Charlie and Eddie, he snapped his fingers as a wide grin spread across his face. “I’ve got an idea … What say we have ourselves a little fun with the retard?”
Chapter Two
“Smile for the Camera!”
Pushing aside his doubts and fears, Mikie ran down the stone stairway and into the mill basement. Sunlight poured through the windows, angling across the dirt floor. He made his way through the maze of tumbled walls and debris to the back of the cellar where a low, doorless entrance led into a small, narrow room. From previous explorations, he knew that this room was beneath the burned-out office addition aboveground. The low ceiling consisted of fire-blackened floor joists that looked as though they could barely support their load of charred debris. Mikie wondered if his first job should be making a door for the room or resupporting the ceiling. Or maybe he should go outside and clear off all that junk, and then rebuild the floor as best he could and cover it all with several feet of dirt. He had to start somewhere, but he knew that job alone would take more than all day.
Mikie wasn’t entirely sure why he had decided to make his shelter in this particular room. In some ways, he felt as though he had been directed, almost commanded by the voices that whispered inside his head to come out here. This room was the deepest part of the mill’s cellar. The walls were well below ground level. That, of course, would be best for his purposes. No radiation from a Russian atomic bomb was going to penetrate that much earth. He had seen a film in history class about the United States dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so he had some idea of the power they packed. He was hoping he could make his shelter strong enough to withstand a direct hit.
After he figured out the problem of the ceiling, his only other concern was the lack of a solid, safe door to close off his homemade bomb shelter. Once the room was ready and stocked with a bed and blankets, clothes, food, and water, there had to be some way to keep intruders out. He would either have to barricade the doorway, using the granite blocks that littered the cellar floor, or else fill dozens of burlap bags with sand and stack them in the doorway. Maybe he could get a bunch of chicken feed bags from out behind Saunders’s chicken coop. Buying a new door with a lock, especially a door thick enough to stop radiation, was definitely out of the question. How would he even get it out here? But maybe there was a door or something else down here in the mill basement that he could use. If he had to, he could probably make one using some of the scrap lumber that was lying around.
He took the stub of a candle he had brought from home, wedged it at about eye level between two stones in the wall, and lit it, using a book of matches he had stolen from the cupboard this morning when his mother wasn’t looking. Once his eyes had adjusted to the feeble glow of light, he set to work. He decided that his first task would be to move some of the smaller granite blocks in front of the doorway to help block the entrance. He also wanted to use them to shore up the walls. There was no telling how close a Russian bomb might fall, after all, and he didn’t want the walls caving in on top of him.
Alter he’d been working for a few minutes, though, he suddenly stopped, freezing in mid-motion when he heard a voice, whispering just at the edge of hearing. He tensed, his eyes widening with fear as he waited for the voice either to get louder or else go away. He honestly couldn’t tell if it had been in the building or inside his head, as the voices sometimes were, but he could sense that someone was nearby; he could feel the shadows shifting all around him, rippling like dark sheets in the wind. He tried to ignore them, knowing that if he turned to look, they would just flutter out of sight anyway.
“I … I know you’re in here … somewhere,” he said.
The sudden sound of his own voice startled him. He cringed as his words echoed from the stone walls with a curious ringing sound. As the echo faded away, he was positive he heard the faint chuffing of laughter.
“Y-Y-You don’t scare me, you know!”
He turned around slowly and started walking backwards until he was standing with his back pressed against the cold stone wall. The teardrop-shaped candle flame shattered into a watery circle of light and seemed for a moment to burn with a weird bluish glow. Sweat broke out on Mikie’s brow when the voice grew louder, whispering and sniffing words that sounded almost like another language.
“D-D-Don’t try to f-f-fool me, talking like that!” he shouted. “I-I know you know English! If you h-h-have something to say, why don’t you j-j-just come out and—and say it?”
His attention was drawn to the window nearest him where he saw a long, pale arm thrust into the cellar. Curled fingers raked the air with a wild, clawing motion. Dirt fell to the cellar floor with a rushing hiss as a voice rang out, sliding slowly up the scale until it was a piercing shriek.
“I’ll … get … you … yet!”
Mikie’s hands tightened around the shovel handle as he raised it protectively in front of his chest. Blood whooshed in his ears as his mind echoed with a loud peal of twisting laughter that was magnified in the darkness as it rolled like distant thunder.
“How da-a-a-re you come into my-y-y mill?” the voice wailed.
This time, it seemed to come from the far end of the cellar. Mikie turned and, for a fleeting, bowel-chilling instant, saw a face, glaring at him through one of the window openings. Then it disappeared, and a chorus of mean-sounding laughter rang inside the basement. Every dark corner of the mill reverberated with the high, keening sound.
“No! … No, please,” Mikie stammered, nearly passing out from fear. His hands clawed at the solid stone wall behind him. “I—I didn’t mean any harm by—by coming down here! I was just—was just—”
“How dare-e-e-e you?”
“I … I th-th-thought you t-t-told me to d-d-do this!”
Mikie’s eyes darted frantically back and forth. H
is mind went blank with terror when he saw another arm reach through a different window. It pointed its middle finger at him and shook it wildly.
“For sham-e-e-e, Michael! … For sham-m-m-m-e-e-e!”
“No—no, I … I just was trying t-t-to … to do s-s-something … to h-h-help my … my family,” Mikie whispered. There was a raw, frantic edge in his voice. “I was—was even g-g-gonna let Eddie in.”
He wasn’t sure if his legs could even support him as he edged over toward the pile of rocks below the small opening in the ceiling. It was the exit nearest to him. His eyes felt like they were going to burst out of his head as he stared up at the dimly lit interior of the mill. High overhead, shadows shifted in the rafters like bats fluttering lazily in the night sky. For a frozen moment, he thought he was looking through the distorting lens of his beloved Polaroid camera. The roof rafters seemed to twist inward into a distorted spiral that threatened to collapse down on him. His breath came in shallow, fitful gasps, but he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs—not near enough to scream. Black, crashing waves of dizziness threatened to throw him over.
“You mus-s-st get out-t-t-t!” a voice wailed, this time sounding as if it were directly behind him, speaking through the stone foundation. “Now!”
“Y-Y-Yes … yes, I—I’ll—”
“You must leave … n-o-o-o-w-w-w!”
Mikie dropped the shovel. It clattered to the dirt floor as he turned and bolted, leaping up onto the pile of rocks and reaching up for the edge of the trapdoor. His heart was throbbing, a cold, hard pressure in his throat as he grabbed the edge of the opening and clawed desperately at the floor to pull himself through.